Dressed to Kill

by Campbell Black

  He owed that much to her.

  Then he felt he wanted to cry again, but he held the feeling back. She wouldn’t have wanted that. He stared at the closed door; she’d never appear there again, scolding him for not getting enough sleep. Never . . . damn, he wasn’t going to think in terms of never; he wanted to pass through that stage. He concentrated on the objects on the table once more, picking up the camera, a Yashica, and the eyepiece of the telescope, testing the screw he had made to bolt the camera to the scope. He was pretty certain it would hold without loosening, provided it didn’t get accidentally knocked. But that was another chance he’d have to take. You couldn’t get round the possibility of an accident.

  Suddenly restless, he got up from the table and walked round the room. She’d always joked about his room, about the mess, the chaos, but the fact was, he knew where to find anything. It might have looked haphazard to an outsider, but he’d arranged everything exactly where he wanted it. When he needed something—a textbook, a tool, anything—he could find it in a second. He stood at the window and looked out across the darkness for a time, wondering about his mother’s killer, wondering about the kind of mind that would produce an act like that. A deranged mind, obviously. The kind of personality that might seek help from a shrink. A shrink like Elliott. I’m not protecting anybody. Elliott had said that. What was there about the shrink he didn’t like? A certain aloofness, maybe. A coldness? He wasn’t sure. He just couldn’t imagine his mother going there as often as she had; he couldn’t even imagine what had made his mother go there anyhow, unless it was connnected with the death of his father . . .

  He felt sad again, a biting sadness that seemed to claw at some place in his chest. You don’t need this, he told himself. You need to act, you need to find out if Elliott is really protecting a patient. So you use the only tools you know how to use: the tools of science, of technology. He picked up the camera, held it to the window, looked through the lens. It worked beautifully; he could see a perfect enlargement of the window on the other side of the street, down to the sight of an illuminated fishtank behind open drapes, he could see the flickering shapes of red swordtails as they moved between swaying plants. He felt pleased with the thing. All that was left now was to attach the electric motor. When he’d done that and enclosed the whole thing in the steel box, he’d be ready.

  He sat down at the table and calculated quickly: assume the average length of an appointment with a psychiatrist is one hour, assume his office hours begin at nine thirty or at ten. Therefore, if you set the time-lapse dial of the electric motor to operate the shutter at fifteen minute intervals, beginning at nine thirty, you have a reasonably good chance of getting the kind of photographs you want. If the first appointment is at nine thirty, you get a picture of that person arriving. If it isn’t until ten, you still get a picture.

  He set the whole thing back down on the worktable, attached the small motor to the camera by means of a strong metal clasp and a wire that ran from the motor to the shutter release with an extra attachment affixed to the film advancer. Then he tested it: it worked perfectly. He loaded the film, put the gadget inside the metal box, padlocked the box. Finished, he was exhausted, and with the fatigue came a sense of despair, of how farfetched his plan really might turn out to be. All kinds of things could go wrong: there might be an accident or Elliott might take the day off or his office hours might be different from those Peter had supposed or his patients might be late or early for their appointments.

  A long shot. A long, long shot.

  But what else could he do? What else could he do with this burning sense he had for revenge?

  He threw some papers off his bed and lay down. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. He closed his eyes, but the images he had scared him, sickened him—that razor falling time and again into his mother’s skin, her blood flowing out, draining out of her.

  He listened once more to the conversation between Marino and Elliott, playing it through his head as if it were tape recorded. And then he thought once again of his mother; this fucking terrible sadness—how could he fight that with science or technology? They were goddamn useless when it came to emotion. They didn’t help.

  He had a tight feeling in his throat.

  He sat upright on the edge of the bed with his eyes closed because he didn’t want to cry again; he wanted to squeeze the tears away. In frustration, he banged his hands together and he thought: I loved you. I loved you deeply.

  And now you’re gone.

  6

  Marino groaned. He must have fallen briefly asleep after calling his wife to say he wouldn’t be home—a call she’d heard too many times, a message she knew by heart—but now he snapped his eyes open as the telephone on his desk rang. Sleepily he reached out to pick it up; at the same time he noticed the tickets to the ball game that were tucked in at the edge of his blotter, something he’d promised his kids. The kids, he thought; he was dragging them up in a world of broken promises.

  “Lieutenant. This is Betty Luce.”

  “Yeah,” Marino said.

  “I’m outside the apartment,” the woman said.

  “And?” Marino heard himself sound grumpy. Waking, when he hadn’t had any sleep, was one of his less pleasant experiences; now he felt drained.

  “It’s all quiet.”

  “Good,” Marino said.

  “I didn’t see her come out. She’s still in there.”

  Marino reached for the tickets to the game. “Did you take a break?”

  “A couple of hours ago,” the woman said. “It was only for coffee . . .”

  Human, all too human, Marino thought. Sometimes he wished cops could be replaced by automatons, things that didn’t have to grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich or drift off into the world of sleep.

  “The apartment lights were on when I left. They just went out about five minutes ago,” the woman said. “Also, I called and hung up when she answered, just to be sure.”

  “Fine,” Marino said. “I’ll see you get relieved as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, Lieutenant.”

  Marino put the telephone down, rubbed his eyes, and then walked up and down his office just to stay awake. It had been a long night, and a longer day lay ahead.

  7

  She took off the padded bra.

  She dropped it to the floor.

  She undid the zipper of her skirt, let it fall around her, stepped out of it.

  She removed the silk panties, kicking them free of her feet.

  Naked, she stood in the middle of the room.

  She stared at the telephone. It depressed her.

  It depressed her because it made her think of Elliott.

  She didn’t want that.

  She scooped up the clothes and put them in a closet.

  There was a pain between her legs.

  She reached down and touched herself.

  A flock of memories crowded her like ravenous black birds. It was as if the sky were darkened, the sun eclipsed one final time.

  Why didn’t you catch the ball?

  Don’t you like the game? Too rough for you?

  She wasn’t sure what to say. Her tongue felt heavy and swollen inside her mouth. Somewhere it was autumn, there was a playing field, there were kids screaming as they chased something, rooks flew upwards out of the stark trees and headed straight for the bronze sun as if they sought disaster in the sky.

  Too rough for you, eh?

  She saw their faces stare at her. Their naked little faces in the changing room. Water was running somewhere. Somebody was whistling. Something splashed. She wished they wouldn’t stare like that. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She took her hand away from between her legs.

  Now there was another voice: a woman’s this time, sounding imperative and sonorous, the kind of voice accustomed to issuing orders and having them obeyed. Her mother. You understand, dear, there are certain things you do not do . . . certain things that are simply not done.

  I ha
ven’t done anything wrong.

  Your sister tells me she found you . . .

  Found me what?

  Playing, shall we say, in a certain fashion.

  It’s not true—

  I’m afraid it is true.

  My sister’s a liar—

  I don’t think so, dear—

  She is! She is! She’s a liar!

  Oh, hardly . . .

  She went inside the bathroom.

  She looked at herself in the mirror.

  She remembered now the strangely luscious feel of taffeta, the thick layers of material lying against her skin, the strange out-of-the-body feeling she’d experienced then, and with it the certain knowledge that she was hideously trapped, imprisoned, contained by the contours of her own flesh.

  Mirror, mirror.

  Answer me.

  Deadening silence.

  A twinge of pain.

  She went close to the mirror; close enough to see the flaws in her skin through the makeup, close enough to see the pores, the cracks, the lines of time. Then she drew away from the image. She shut her eyes.

  All you had to do, Elliott, was to give your permission.

  A small thing. Your signature. Your okay.

  The operation.

  But you didn’t. You didn’t because you don’t know the hellish nature of this kind of trap. You just don’t understand . . .

  I’ll kill again, she thought. And you’ll know it was me again.

  She felt tears run down her face, tracking thinly over the makeup, bitter rivulets she couldn’t stop, couldn’t hold back. She caught the memory, months old, of another blade, of raising that same blade in her hands, bringing it down, bringing it down between her legs—

  She went out of the bathroom and picked up the telephone.

  Without dialling a number she said, “Help me, Levy. You must help me!”

  She put the receiver down.

  She drew her hand away from it, watched the hand rise in the air, felt it fall, felt it stop between her legs, felt it touch the thin layer of gauze that was wrapped around the shaft of the penis.

  As if scalded, she pulled her hand away. It was a nightmare too old, too familiar, a nightmare whose end she couldn’t see.

  FIVE

  1

  It was that time of morning when the city felt clean in its emptiness, when the lack of traffic on the streets, the absence of people, suggested that maybe some silent nuclear attack had taken place during the hours of darkness. A neutron bomb, Peter thought, the kind that kills all the inhabitants but leaves the buildings standing. He rode his bicycle almost carelessly, cruising through DON’T WALK signs, cutting past stop lights, feeling some extraordinary exhilaration at being alone in the streets. Even the buildings seemed not to reach upwards like they usually did; rather, they appeared dwarfed in the clarity of dawn. He pedalled hard, cycling past the empty storefronts and luncheonettes that hadn’t yet opened. There was even a slight breeze, clean and crystal in a way that surprised him.

  When he reached the street where Elliott’s office was located, he slowed his bike a little, took Elliott’s card from his pocket, checked the address again, and then began to look for the number. When he found it he paused, stared at the wooden door and the brass plaque with the psychiatrist’s name; then he wheeled diagonally across the street to a NO PARKING sign. He took a padlock from his jacket and bolted the bike to the sign. As he worked, he glanced once more across at the door of Elliott’s office—nothing, no sign of life—and he couldn’t help thinking of his mother coming out of there yesterday, even if yesterday seemed to him now an illogical number of years ago. Subjective time, he thought, something measured by some inner psychological clock.

  He opened the metal box fastened to the rack of the bike, turning the key in the padlock. He reached inside and touched the camera, made sure that the telescope was mounted securely, that the small electric motor was functioning properly. He switched on the motor, heard it whir quietly, then he checked that the lens of the camera was properly positioned against a small aperture cut into the metal box. What if it doesn’t work? he wondered. Imponderables: somebody could come along and hacksaw the whole padlock off and that would be the end of that plan, or maybe the photographs would be timed badly, missing the people who entered and left Elliott’s office, in which case he’d have a set of terrific shots of a closed door. You had to take a chance, he told himself. He closed the hinged lid of the metal box, making sure once again that everything was in working order, then he locked the box and rattled both padlocks with his fingers. They were secure; everything was as secure as he could make it.

  He walked a few paces away, turned, then stared back across the street at the door of the psychiatrist’s office. Still no sign of life. Only the first glimmer of morning sunlight, burning against the brass nameplate, suggested movement.

  He rubbed his hands, realizing suddenly that there was a chill in the morning air, a factor he’d been too preoccupied to notice before. Later he’d come back for the bike and the camera and see what he might have captured.

  2

  Elliott woke in his office, his body stiff from the angle he’d been sleeping in. He groaned quietly, rose from the sofa, and went inside the bathroom where he splashed his face and neck with cold water. Drying himself off, he walked to the desk and looked at his wristwatch. 8:05. It wasn’t his custom to sleep this late; it must have been on account of the Equanil he’d taken the night before, which might also have explained the slight nausea he felt as he drew the drapes back from the window. The morning light was stunning; blinking, he stepped away. He took his shirt from the back of the chair where he’d left it last night, put it on, then pulled on his pants. He checked the answering machine on his desk but there were no messages—nothing, nothing from Bobbi. He fastened his cuff links and sat behind the desk and gazed at the telephone, wondering why she hadn’t called. Sooner or later, he thought, the telephone will ring and she’ll be on the other end of the line . . . But he didn’t want to think about her now. He flipped open the pages of his appointments book and just as he was doing so he heard his front doorbell ring. The mailman, he thought, a package, a registered letter. He went out through the reception room to the lobby and drew the chain on the front door.

  But it wasn’t the mailman.

  It was Anne.

  Elliott, surprised, didn’t move for a time.

  “Do I get asked in, dear?” Anne said.

  “Of course, I . . .”

  “Surprised to see me, I imagine,” she said.

  He held the door wide. She brushed past him, her hands in the pockets of her tweed jacket. He noticed the leather patches stitched to the elbows, the baggy flannel pants, the brown shoes of a kind that might once have been called sensible. She left in her passage a faint scent of alcohol, gin maybe; he wasn’t sure. He followed her inside the reception room, then through to his office, and what struck him, rather forcefully, was how incongruous it felt to have his wife here, as if this were his domain alone, a secret aspect of his life that had nothing to do with her. With the feeling came a slight sense of resentment.

  “I came down on an early train,” she said, looking around the office, going to the desk, picking up the framed photograph of herself that sat there. She stared at it, then set it down as if it disgusted her. She swung around to face him. “You look as if you didn’t get much of a night’s sleep, my dear . . .”

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” he asked. He sighed, thinking: I don’t need to start my day like this, I don’t need a scene with Anne.

  Anne shook her head. She wandered around the room, looking at the shelf of books, touching the handles of locked cabinets. He sensed something dangerous all at once, something destructive. He could imagine her pulling the books down, breaking the locks on the cabinets, smashing things.

  “The early train is rather nice,” she said. “They serve drinks. I availed myself of that service, of course.”

  “Of cours
e,” Elliott said.

  She leaned against the desk, staring at the sofa. “Is that where your so-called patients lie down? Do they lie there and divulge their miserable little secrets to you? Do they trust you, my dear?” She smiled in a thin way.

  “Sometimes,” he said. He picked up his necktie and draped it beneath his collar, nervously making a knot. “Why did you come here, Anne?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I found myself at what you might conveniently call a loose end. I thought, well . . . I might as well take a quick trip into town and see how my husband is doing. The mountain goes to Mohammed, so to speak.”

  He watched her wander back to the books again. She reached up, took one down, flicked through the pages. She laughed, for no reason he could understand, although there was a vaguely hysterical edge to the sound.

  “Do you actually read all this stuff?” she said.

  “I try to keep up,” he said.

  “I try to keep up,” she said, mimicking him. “The Treatment of Schizophrenic Psychosis by Direct Analytic Therapy. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Elliott folded his arms, said nothing. He knew this mood too well, the bitterness, the underlying savagery.

  She replaced the book and looked along the other titles.

  “Nothing on how to fix a marriage, dear? Nothing like a self-help marital manual?”

  He still didn’t speak.

  “Fuck you,” she said. “You leave me in that ghastly house, you never even bother . . .” She paused, close to tears, her lower lip trembling in a way he found distasteful. Anne, he thought. And for a moment he wanted to reach out and touch her in some way, to silence the sound of a marriage falling apart, the brutal noise of the heart’s assassination. But it had gone past that a long time ago, and now there was nothing he could do.

  “Today is the day,” she said.

  “What day do you mean, Anne?”

  “Shall I lie on the couch and let you analyze me?”

  “What day are you talking about, Anne?”